Tag Archives: pandemic

medical news

Texas AG sues districts … for seeking to keep everyone safe?

There’s a lot of things that get past me. Not this item.

Masks help prevent the spread of a deadly virus. Local Texas school districts are defying a governor’s order that bans them from issuing “mask mandates.” The Texas attorney general, who’s under felony indictment, has sued six Texas school districts for defying Gov. Greg Abbott’s order prohibiting them from issuing mask mandates.

So, wait. Does that mean that Abbott and the AG, Ken Paxton, don’t want districts to do what they can to protect teachers, students, parents and staffers? Really?

Two of the districts — Sherman and Richardson — are in North Texas. This is a ridiculous waste of time and money. Why? Because the governor is flat wrong to ban local officials from doing what they can to protect their constituents against the COVID-19 virus.

The Texas Tribune reports: Some 85 school districts and six counties have instituted mask mandates of some kind in defiance of Abbott’s ban — citing the need to protect schoolchildren too young to get the vaccine amid the spread of the highly contagious delta variant of COVID-19.

Texas AG sues Sherman, Richardson, other ISDs over masking (ketr.org)

This is preposterous in the extreme. School districts have an obligation to do what they can to protect children, teachers and anyone who enters these public buildings. They shouldn’t be fighting the governor — for crying out loud! — in that effort.

As for the AG, he’s got his own legal battles to fight, as he is awaiting trial on a Collin County indictment that he committed securities fraud.

Abbott and Paxton are managing to enrage me more each day.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news, national security

Unity: Is it impossible to find?

Political unity shouldn’t be this hard to find; it shouldn’t be this elusive.

It most certainly is, however.

The nation is honoring the sacrifice we endured on 9/11. Part of the honor has been to salute the unity we felt when President Bush called on us to fight the terrorists who hit us hard, who killed all those Americans.

We answered the terrorists with one clear and forceful voice.

That was then. The unity we felt in the moment didn’t last long. Bush eventually decided to expand our war against terror by invading Iraq in March 2003. The president lied to us. He told us the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction; they didn’t. He also sought to tell us that the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein played a role in the 9/11 attacks; he didn’t.

We’ve been divided ever since.

Two decades later we are now fighting an even more insidious enemy. It’s a pandemic that has killed more than 600,000 Americans, far more than who died in the 9/11 attacks.

President Biden is seeking to unify us against the pandemic. He can’t find the formula. Our divisions have been cast along partisan lines. Democrats push for vaccine and mask mandates; Republicans resist them both. Think of this for a moment. Our entire nation is being struck by a virus, yet the president can’t unify us.

Surely we don’t require an attack from a foreign enemy to bring us together. Or do we?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

local news, medical news

Medical personnel are heroes as well

(Photo by Gerardo Vieyra/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

A phone call today produced a remarkable statement from one of my North Texas sources, a fellow I have gotten to know well while working as a freelance reporter for the Farmersville Times.

He is recovering from pneumonia induced by the COVID-19 virus.

He is grateful to be alive. Indeed, there was a lilt in his voice I hadn’t heard before today.

My source wanted to make a critical point: He said the medical personnel to tended to him are “among the very best.” They are performing heroic work under trying conditions, he said.

I did not press this fellow about precisely where he had been hospitalized. His feelings, though, about the medical personnel who cared for him could apply all across the spectrum.

My goodness, we hear stories of doctors and nurses stressing out as they care for those cannot touch their loved ones. The coronavirus isolates the sick from the healthy. Those who are hospitalized by the COVID virus become the exclusive charges of the medical professionals who care for them.

So, these folks step up. They become “surrogate loved ones” for those who depend on them to bring them back to good health or to save their lives.

As my friend noted as well, they are answering the call to do what they can under the most trying circumstances one can imagine.

“They need to know how much we care about them,” my friend said. I assured him that I would use this blog as a forum to do that very thing.

So … that is what I am doing here.

These men and women have earned our eternal gratitude for the work they are doing. They save lives every day. How much more heroic than that can it get?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news

GOP resists POTUS’s effort to keep us safe? Really?

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Did anyone out there ever believe we would see politicians rise up against a presidential decree that seeks to keep all Americans safe from a killer pandemic virus?

If you did, then you are the smartest individuals in all of human history.

I never saw it. Then again, I can be a dim bulb at times … but that’s not the point.

President Biden has issued a stern executive order aimed at private businesses and all federal employees. He insists that employees and federal workers get vaccinated. No debate on it, he said. Companies that do business with the feds must ensure their employees are vaccinated, the president said.

This is a comprehensive effort by our head of state that we no longer will tolerate a pandemic that is caused by those who are unvaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. The overwhelming majority of those who are being hospitalized in this moment are those who haven’t been inoculated against the virus. President Biden said “enough is enough,” or words to that effect.

Now, though, we hear from Republican governors vowing to fight like hell against any effort from the president to do the right thing, which aims to protect all Americans against potential death.

Why are these governors resisting? Oh, I almost forgot. They adhere to the weird whims of the 45th POTUS, the moron who sold us all out by downplaying the severity of the pandemic when it first started killing Americans in late 2019.

Man, oh man. We live in the strangest political climate I ever have seen. It’s weirder than the late 1960s and the Vietnam War protests; or the mid-1970s and the Watergate scandal.

Not only has the former POTUS fomented the Big (damn) Lie about phony vote fraud in the 2020 presidential election. He has persuaded GOP governors that it’s all right to issue orders that result in the sickening and the death of Americans.

Now these nitwits are challenging President Biden’s effort to rid us of this pandemic.

Astonishing.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Joe Biden

Biden pledges to save lives

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President Biden today took on the role of commander in chief in our nation’s fight against a killer virus.

The president has issued an order that every federal employee shall be vaccinated against the virus. Moreover, he said that every private company that does business with the federal government will have its employees vaccinated. He signed an executive order and declared that he now is going to act like a wartime president in the fight against the COVID-19 virus and its assorted variants.

This is what presidents need to do!

Biden’s immediate predecessor as POTUS once famously — and wisely — declared that he saw himself as a “wartime president” when the pandemic took root. The problem, though, is that he didn’t follow through on the declaration. He didn’t walk the wartime walk.

President Biden is demonstrating that he understands the power of his office and the overwhelming priority he must place in protecting the health and the lives of Americans.

We have lost more than 600,000 of our fellow citizens to the virus. It has stricken more than 40 million of us.

Biden’s order figures to affect as many as 80 million Americans who aren’t currently vaccinated. Yes, there might be some out there who cannot take the vaccine on religious grounds. I understand that resistance. I don’t agree with it, but I accept that others have such sincere religious belief.

However, the obstinance being shown by those who want to make some sort of hare-brained political statement about the vaccine is ridiculous on its face.

The Hill reports:

A senior administration official told reporters that under a new executive order to be announced by the president, federal employees will have 75 days to be fully vaccinated, with limited exemptions for religious or medical reasons. There will be no testing option. The order will cover about 100 million workers. 

“It’s simple; if you want to work for the federal government, you must be vaccinated. If you want to do business with the government, you must vaccinate your workforce,” the official said.

Biden to require COVID-19 vaccines, tests for millions of private workers | TheHill

I stand with the president.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news, science news

Docs are invaluable

These social media messages can be so instructive. This one caught me eye and I want to share it.

The nimrods who bitch about the doctors, scientists, researchers and drug company executives are all too willing to throw themselves at their feet when they get sick.

The COVID-19 virus continues to ravage us. It is infecting us at an alarming rate … still! Yet we hear from the red-state rubes that they don’t trust the vaccines being offered; they mistrust the advice of learned medical and scientific professionals, such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the world’s pre-eminent infectious disease expert; they rely on livestock medication that the docs say is bad for you.

Then they get sick. They are hospitalized. Then they depend on the very same docs who warned them to get vaccinated, to mask up, to practice social distancing; they want those folks to make ’em better.

Hypocrisy? You bet!

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Seat belts, stop lights and now masks

Government makes us do all kinds of things that some of us would rather not do.

It makes us wear seat belts while driving or riding in a motor vehicle.

We stop at red lights that signal us to stop … at least most of us do it.

We obey orders not to smoke cigarettes, cigars or pipes indoors.

Now the government at some levels wants us to wear masks when we enter enclosed spaces. Why? To protect us against a killer virus, the COVID 19 and its variants.

What in the name of sanity is wrong with following that order, too?

To me, there’s nothing wrong with it. Do I like donning a mask, fishing for it out of some compartment in my vehicle? No. I don’t … but I do it anyway!

Wear a damn mask! It will save your life and could save the lives of those around you … including those you love dearly.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news

‘My body, my choice’

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Think about yet another example of right-wing hypocrisy for just a moment.

The conservative political movement has dismissed for decades progressives’ mantra that “my body, my choice” defined their opposition to government mandates banning abortion. They insisted that government had every right to “protect the rights of the unborn.”

Oh, but wait! Now we hear conservatives saying “my body, my choice” as they resist efforts to allow governmental mandates to get vaccinated against a disease that could kill them deader than dead. Government, in this instance, is seeking to protect the lives and the health of those who walk among us.

So, which is it, right-wingers?

Hypocrisy is just so damn ugly. Don’t you think?

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

national news

Political snipers taking pot shots

The political sniper squad is at it hot and heavy.

They are suggesting that President Biden will be a one-termer. That his “performance” in announcing the U.S. withdrawal from the Afghan field of battle has sealed his political fate. They suggest the voters have lost “confidence” in his leadership.

Hmm. Allow me this pithy response: Bullsh**!

The president ended an unwinnable war. Our armed forces executed the evacuation of more than 100,000 Americans and Afghan allies.

We fought al-Qaeda for two decades. We killed the monstrous mastermind behind the 9/11 attack — which is why we went to war in the first place. The Taliban had revived itself long before Joe Biden took office. President Biden’s predecessor negotiated a withdrawal with the Taliban; he set a May 1 evac date, but he lost re-election in November.

President Biden was dealt a bad hand when he took office. Dare I mention, too, that his predecessor provided him with zero national security intelligence because, um, he is continuing to insist that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him?

So, for the first time in two decades, we have no Americans on a battlefield anywhere on Earth.

I could swear as well that I heard President Biden declare his intention to hold the Taliban accountable for the pledges they made in ensuring safe passage for any American still in Afghanistan who wants out. I also heard him say our intelligence forces will be on the highest alert possible for any potential terror threat that may surface in Afghanistan … or anywhere else in the world.

Lost confidence? This drama has yet to play out fully.

We have a pandemic that well could be eliminated in the months ahead. And, oh yes, our economy continues to produce jobs at a record-breaking rate.

All that said, I am not going to join the amen chorus that suggests that Joe Biden tenure as president is toast.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

medical news

Appreciating a POTUS who stays out of the way

The coronavirus pandemic has gripped two presidencies hard, which brings me to this thought.

The first president snagged by the pandemic, No. 45, kept stepping into the spotlight and talked over the advice we were getting from the experts he had brought in ostensibly to “assist” him in fighting the killer virus.

He hired a first-rate team. Then he refused to let them do their job, which was brief the public on what they know and how to advise us on dealing with the peril.

The next president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., aka No. 46, has stayed the hell out of the way. He kept a couple of his predecessor’s key medical advisers. President Biden has brought in some experts of his choosing.

The refreshing and, frankly, encouraging aspect of the current president’s modus operandi is that he is letting the experts talk directly to us. He isn’t stepping on their lines. He is not contradicting them. Biden is not hurling epithets, such as “idiot” and “loser” at them.

Yes, we are experiencing a surge in infection. A variant has emerged that has dodged its way out of medicine’s best strategies to deal with it. Children have become a major concern.

However, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, is letting the experts do what they do better than anyone else, which is convey information we need and provide counsel to the nation in need of some level of expertise.

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com